Saturday, June 16 2012 at 7:30 PM

On Saturday, June 16, at 7:30 PM, at Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A West 13th Street, ARTS AT TENRI will begin its fifth season of presenting chamber music traditions from both Europe and Japan. The bamboo flute of Japan meets the strings of Europe in this remarkable program of shakuhachi, violin, cello and piano. Renowned musicians Eriko Sato (violin), Laura Metcalf (cello), David Oei (piano) and James Nyoraku Schlefer (shakuhachi) perform music by American composers Marty Regan and James Nyoraku Schlefer, plus the US premiere of "Seasons" by Iranian composer Eslami Mirabadi. Franz Schubert's classic "Piano Trio in D Minor" (sans shakuhachi) concludes the concert.

Eriko Sato is a leading violinist on the New York City chamber music scene and a co-concertmaster of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestra Of St. Luke's. She made her solo debut at age 13 and has performed as soloist with orchestras in Louisville, San Francisco and Tokyo. Ms. Sato was the winner of the Tibor Varga International Competition, the Young Musicians Foundation Competition and three Japanese National Competitions. An active chamber musician, Ms. Sato has participated in the Mostly Mozart, Aspen, Sitka, Angel Fire, Gretna, Affinis and Kuhmo Music Festivals, and has appeared regularly with Bargemusic, Chamber Music Northwest, The American String Project, Music From Japan, Caramoor, Dobbs Ferry and the Washington Square Music Festivals. A founding member of the Aspen Soloists, Festival Chamber Music and Salon Chamber Soloists she is also a member of the Elysium, Ecliptica and American Chamber Ensembles. Ms. Sato is an Affiliate Artist of Innovative Music Programs, a company that develops and implements creative ideas with people in the visual and performing arts the world over.
As a concertmaster of Orpheus, she appears on Deutsche Grammophon recordings, where her releases include Vivaldi's Four-Violin Concerto and Handel's Concerti Grossi, Op. 6. For MusicMasters, she appears with the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble in the Bach Concerti and the chamber music of Hindemith and Beethoven. Her latest releases are Allen Shawn's string quartet "Sleepless Night" and "Mozart Flute Quartets" on Albany Records. She has also recorded for Vanguard, Delos, Elysium and Grenadilla labels and has been featured on CBS News Sunday Morning. Ms. Sato has taught at Queens College and the Aspen Music Festival and is currently a faculty member of Bennington Chamber Music Conference, Hoff-Barthelson Music School and the Mannes College Of Music Preparatory Division, where she teaches violin and chamber music. She lives in New York City with her husband, pianist David Oei, and their pit bull mix, Jazz. Her first duo CD with David titled "Five Not-So-Easy Pieces" was recently released on their new label "Prestissimo".

Pianist, David Oei, was a soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic at the age of nine and has since performed with major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore Symphonies. Mr. Oei is the winner of five Interlochen Concerto Competitions and the Concert Artists Guild, WQXR Young Artists, Young Musicians Foundation and Paul Ulanowsky Chamber Pianists Awards. A perennial fixture on the New York City chamber music scene he has made guest appearances with the Audubon Quartet, Claring Chamber Players, Da Capo Chamber Players, New York Philharmonic Ensembles, St. Luke's and Orpheus Chamber Ensembles and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Founding director of the Salon Chamber Soloists and a founding member of the Aspen Soloists, Festival Chamber Music and the Intimate P.D.Q. Bach he is also currently a member of the Elysium Chamber Ensemble, Friends Of Mozart, LED Trio and the HD Duo with pianist Helene Jeanney besides enjoying a longtime collaboration with violinist Chin Kim. A former regular artist at Bargemusic and Chamber Music Northwest he has performed at various festivals including Caramoor, Sitka, Bard, Gretna, Seattle, Chestnut Hill, Dobbs Ferry, OK Mozart, Washington Square and Kuhmo (Finland). Mr. Oei is an Affiliate Artist of Innovative Music Programs, a company that develops and implements creative ideas with people in the visual and performing arts the world over.
His television credits include Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, CBS News Sunday Morning and the Today Show. He has recorded a wide range of chamber works for Delos, ADDA, Vanguard, CRI, Pro Arte, Arabesque, Albany, Grenadilla and New World Records. Mr. Oei was the Music Director and Production Advisor for Music-Theatre Group's productions of Stanley Silverman and Richard Foreman's Africanis Instructus and Love and Science. He was also the Music Director for the Sundance Theater Workshop production of the Wallace/Foreman opera Yiddisher Teddy Bears. In the summer of '07 he conducted the Washington Square Festival Chamber Orchestra in a Gershwin/Weill concert titled Music as Political Statement and he recorded the Strauss and Rachmaninoff Sonatas for cello and piano to help launch the Festival Chamber Music label using CD-60, the Steinway Grand featured in James Barron's bestseller Piano. A very special project was his recent recording with Lutz Rath of The Lay of Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke by Viktor Ullmann for piano and speaker. In April '10 he released his first duo CD with Eriko Sato (violin) titled Five Not-So-Easy Pieces on his new label Prestissimo.

Cellist, Laura Metcalf, lauded for her “sensitive, melodic touch” (BlogCritics Magazine) enjoys an active career as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral musician, and teacher. She is the cellist of acclaimed string quintet Sybarites5 who won the 2011 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, and has performed sold-out concerts at the Library of Congress, Lincoln Center and many other venues across the country. Sybarite5 will make its Carnegie Hall debut at Zankel Hall in November 2012, and their album “Disturb the Silence” recently reached no. 10 on the Billboard Charts. Laura has given solo recitals on the WMP Strad for Lunch Series, the Hewlett-Woodmere Gold Series, the Church of Beethoven (New Mexico), Shandelee Music Festival Series, and the Livingston Music Club Series. This past season she was featured as a soloist with the One World Symphony playing an arrangement of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time for cello and orchestra and has also been a soloist with the Ensemble 212 Orchestra and, as a member of the Tarab Cello Ensemble, the Orquesta Sinfonica Sinaloa.

In 2011 Laura was appointed the newest member the cello-percussion ensemble Break of Reality, with whom she has already performed in venues in New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, Michigan and Missouri, and whose albums routinely sell in the tens of thousands worldwide. Laura was appointed to the conductorless string ensemble Salome Chamber Orechestra, with whom she appeared in Carnegie Hall and Steinway Hall.`

James Nyoraku Schlefer, Composer and Shakuhachi is a Grand Master of the shakuhachi, and one of only a handful of non-Japanese artists to have achieved this rank. Mr. Schlefer received the Dai-Shi-Han (Grand Master) certificate in 2001, and his second Shi-Han certificate in 2008 from Mujuan Dojo, in Kyoto. In Japan, Schlefer has worked with Reibo Aoki, Katsuya Yokoyama, Yoshio Kurahashi, Yoshinobu Taniguchi, and Kifu Mitsuhashi.

Mr. Schlefer has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Tanglewood, and BAM, as well as multiple venues across the country and in Japan, Indonesia, Brazil and Europe. As a composer, he has written multiple chamber and orchestral works combining Japanese and Western instruments as well as numerous pieces solely for traditional Japanese instruments. Mr. Schlefer is the Artistic Director of Kyo-Shin-An Arts, and the curator for the Japanese music series at the Tenri Cultural Institute in NYC. He teaches shakuhachi at Columbia University, a broad spectrum of Western and World music courses at New York City Technical College (CUNY), and performs and lectures at colleges and universities throughout the United States. Mr. Schlefer has four solo recordings, Wind Heart (which travelled 120,000,000 miles aboard the Space Station MIR) Solstice Spirit (1998), Flare Up (2002), and In the Moment (2008).